Track 29 to host monthly 'Scenic City Roots' concert/show

The folks who produced the Gig City Roots concert this past summer at Coolidge Park plan to produce a monthly concert called Scenic City Roots.

The concerts also will be streamed on the Internet and broadcast on local TV.

Beginning March 7 at Track 29, the series will be produced by Heng Dai Media, which also produces a similar show called "Music City Roots" from a barn in Nashville, and the Bluegrass Underground series, which is filmed inside Cumberland Caverns in McMinnville, Tenn.

The lineup for the first Chattanooga concert will be The Steel Drivers, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, JOHNNYSWIM and the WTM Blues Band.

Executive producer Todd Mayo says the concerts -- whose lead sponsor is the Chattanooga Times Free Press -- will take place on the first Thursday of each month and will feature three out-of-town acts and one local act.

Along with the music, acts will be interviewed on camera and the full show will be streamed live on the Internet, he says. After that, four 30-minute shows will be created and shown once a week at 9 p.m. Thursday on WTCI-TV 45. The Tennessee Channel (WTCI-TV 45.2) will show them across the state on the weekend as well, he says.

Craig Havighurst, founder of String Theory Media in Nashville, will handle the on-air interviews, Keith Bilbrey, a well-known radio and TV personality in Nashville, will announce the acts and singer/songwriter Jim Lauderdale will emcee the evening.

"We are tremendously excited about this," Mayo says. "Track 29 is the perfect partner with state-of-the-art lighting and sound and high-speed Internet.

"We feel like it is a great opportunity to partner with these guys and showcase Chattanooga and Chattanooga's talent and hopefully bring more musicians to Chattanooga," Kinsey says. "That is really why we got into this in the first place."

Mayo says the idea behind the show is to "shine a light on" Chattanooga, local music and music from around the region. His company plans to use every avenue available, he says, from television to streaming to YouTube to social media to get the music "to the world."

Admission for the concerts will be $10 for general admission and $5 for students.